Make your social media audience convert

social media audience

 

Do you ever wonder if your business and social media target are not the same? Do you struggle with converting your social media followers into customers?

If you answered “yes” to those questions it is very likely that you are not sure about your social media target and need to define the right one. From my experience, this confusion is quite common and this is why I decided to talk about it to make your social media audience convert.

Your goal is to increase revenue

For some businesses, social media is more a communication channel to raise awareness around a topic or product than a sales tool. In this case, it is ok if the audience is broader than the target clients. However, it is important to keep in mind that what you ultimately want is a successful and sustainable business, which comes with an optimal revenue.

You can have 100k followers on Facebook, but if no one converts, they won’t help you. I once saw a startup having a huge success on social media, but no paying clients at all. There was an obvious gap between the shared content and the products.

If this is also your case, you might have created awareness around a certain field or topic, but you haven’t created it around your brand. If your company is new, it could be worthy considering to pivot the business model and find a way to make revenue out of social media.

The metrics you should care about don’t relate to the quantity of followers but the quality of them:

  • Comments on each post
  • Number of people actively interacting
  • Number of shares
  • Subscribers to your mailing list
  • Leads
  • Sales

If you are not satisfied with them, you have to fill the gap between social media and your target. To do so, you work on both, the content and the target.

Work on your target

Define the target
First of all, you need to define the target. A good start is creating demographic profiles for your actual customers and for your ideal ones. Find out the age, gender, income, location, profession, likes and dislikes etc. If your product appeals to different groups, create a specific profile for each of them. This will help you adapting the content to the specific category you are targeting each time.

Find out where they hang out
The second step is to find out where they hang out, on what social media channels do they spend most time. We can briefly see the major ones:

Facebook
With its over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is definitely the most popular social media platform. It seems to be equally spread out between genders and age groups and that people with higher education and medium to high income use it.

social media audience

Source OmniCore Agency

YouTube
With its 1.3 billion users per month, YouTube is the second largest network. Men have a preference for YouTube compared to women and that it’s a great platform if you’re targeting younger users, but you have to create a good video with a catchy introduction:

social media audience

Source Fortune Lords

Instagram
Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform, but it has “only” 800 million monthly active users. It is a good channel if you’re targeting a rather young group and especially female:

social media audience

Source OmniCore 

Twitter
Twitter is losing some ground, however it is still a popular tool that, as of January 1 2018, has 330 million users. If you are targeting middle class from US, Brazil, and Japan.

social media audience

Source OmniCore

Snapchat
Snapchat is another very fast growing social media, reaching over 300 million active users per month. You can’t miss it if you’re targeting a younger and mostly female audience.

social media audience

Source OmniCore  

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the “most serious” and “professional” social media, the one that fosters professional connections to its over 250 million monthly active users: It is the place to go if your target is educated and has a medium to high salary.

Source OmniCore

Work on the content

Now that you know who and where your target is, you can adapt your content to it. Share something that appeals to them and in a way that is appropriate for the channel. You are among millions of brands on social media, so, you want to deliver value, make your audience happy to see your content because it is great and you don’t spam them with too many posts.

It is usually best to create specific content for each social media platform and not just share the same on multiple platforms.

Facebook
Facebook allows you to write longer posts. Try to write in a compelling way because people like reading informative content. But to grab their attention while they scroll down their feed, it’s best to add a picture or video.

YouTube
Well, YouTube is for videos only. What really is key is the introduction, as people would leave a video they don’t find interesting after 10 seconds. Ads on YouTube are quite annoying; however, they are a great opportunity for marketers because viewers are forced to see them and if they are good, they’ll remember the brand.
Having a good YouTube channel is probably the costliest social media of all, but it is worthy if one is marketing a product whose target is young, predominantly male and a video lover.

Instagram
Instagram is the picture social media par excellence. I think it is really important to think if one’s product or service is suitable for taking many images or not. Keep in mind that if your profile is mostly raising awareness around a topic and not your brand, the best thing that can happen to you is to become an influencer in the field, but it won’t bring you more sales!
If your product or service is suitable for pictures, then it is best to have a plan and use the same filters every time to create a more homogenous and visually appealing profile.
Captions are important to describe the product you are promoting. Make them compelling and explicative, make followers feel the value you are selling. Hashtags are also very important to make more people find you. It’s worthy to do a research and find the best one for your field.

Twitter
With the restriction of only 140 characters, Tweets have to be concise, compelling and straight to the point. To grab more attention, you can share a picture.
You can direct to articles or posts through links. Since also the characters in the link count, it is best to use a tool to shorten it such as bit.ly.
Many Twitter users go there for news, so it is best if your content is informative.

Snapchat
Teenagers on Snapchat post their “stories”, so to target them, you will take pictures, use funny filters, and upload your daily business’ story.
You can also create branded filters, which will only appear in specific locations you define. This makes them great when you are having an event. You only need to design and upload it, while people will be able to add this extra spice to their story at your event.

LinkedIn
The content you share on LinkedIn is more professional, but this doesn’t mean it has to be boring. You can upload pictures, infographics and even videos. So, you can be creative here as well!
People would mainly go on LinkedIn to look for business opportunities or expand their networks. What you can provide them is interesting facts about your company and products or your field. You can show how innovative your brand is and its deep knowledge of the industry.

Social media can boost your sales, but you have to use it in the right way, in order to engage with the right people and make your social media audience convert.